Sabbath School Holiday of those parts. Would that the maligners of factories beheld that spectacle! The health, the neatness, the joyance, of that anniversary might strike them with shame and turn them to truth! It is a Pentecost to convince the gainsayer and the churl.

The greater happiness of the agricultural labourer is affirmed. But so long as happiness is a general word, this assumption is gratuitous. To many, a brutal existence suggests the only idea of happiness, which would be interrupted and marred by thought and study. If they be right, every man is more happy as he recedes from the means and provocatives of intelligence, that is, as he becomes less and less the man. But the animal happiness of every day must mainly depend upon the satisfaction of our natural cravings. And do we imagine that the skilled labourer is only doomed to struggle with privation, and that the countryman riots in fulness of bread? Where is this Arcadia of sylvan bliss? Where are the regions through which these Georgics sound? The peasantry of this country is very generally in a most degraded condition. Their food, their apparel, their lodging, are much below those of the manufacturing vicinage. Or, is happiness to be computed by liberty? We deny not that despotism is the temptation and abuse of power in all circumstances. But we are quite sure that, if the proprietor of the mill were to attempt the exercise of his influence in the same manner with

which landowners threaten their tenants and tenants their servants, they would presently feel the impotence of their endeavour and the ridicule of their position. It may be said, that at least the field-labourer knows not confinement, but is refreshed by the breath and light of heaven. All this may be preferable; but it is a tethered freedom still; it is a drudgery, in many of its duties, which is not envied by the craftsman: it is an exposure to the skiey influences which might be often cheerfully exchanged for the mansion of mechanical art.

They who are acquainted with the country-life of England, its "rural reign," cannot fail to be surprised at the panegyrics which certain orators declaim on that class of its population. We speak mainly of the Southern counties. We forget not exceptions even there. That population is ground down to the earth. It is well-nigh pauperised. We honouringly contrast its patience, its contentment, its cheerfulness, with its treatment. Half-fed and that often on a miserable pulse, wages reduced to the lowest point of sustentation, through every hour hanging on abject conditions, every expression of personal preference in religion and politics scornfully denied, we may wonder at their forbearance. They are often cared for less than the clod of the valley, or the herd of the stall. Soils shall be improved. Breeds shall be perfected. Stock shall be adjudged with honour. Cultivation shall be assisted with every experiment and be rewarded with

every prize. And then when some monstrous growth, some crass carcase, some field implement, has been lauded to the echo which applauds again, a poor labourer is introduced, and he shares in the honours of the show, for having brought up so many children without parish pay! Nature and ingenuity have been racked in the other instances of success, and surely not the less in this! It is an appropriate climax to the fete! An admiring district can scarcely determine where the greater glory of invention falls!

The question of the comparative morality of these departments is, of all, the most important. It is not to be decided by a glance. It is commonly taken for granted that the country is the favourite scene and haunt of the virtues. The cottier is the Adamite dressing his plat on the outer fence of Eden. The village green and oak might be the neighbourhood of Mamre. Here simplicity has received no blight, and purity no taint. Pastorals fill the air, and the melody of woods and brooks swells the chant of native reeds. But there may be observers who yield to no such romance. They yet hold that, in the rural portions of the kingdom, there is a more spotless state of morals. Now will it be contended that there is in them as exalted sense, as generous practice, of morals as is often demonstrated in our city-marts? Is it maintained that the vices of our towns are not rife in our villages? Perhaps the complaint simply respects the number of offences. Our County calendars must determine that. Then do

we feel bold in the argument, that the most numerous and most odious crimes come not from the towns, but from scattered hamlets and solitary dwellings. The Quarter Sessions, it will be said, dispose of cases that come from the towns, and they are not heard of in the gaol delivery of the shire. But these enormities, wherever committed, must go to the higher court. And are there not Sessions for the counties and divisions of counties, as well as for the boroughs? Let the truth,—it is extorted from those who are impartial,-be simply told. The proportion of criminals to every thousand inhabitants is higher in Worcestershire than in Middlesex, and is equal to that of Lancashire. Herefordshire exceeds Leicestershire. Dorset surpasses Nottinghamshire. The county of Oxford is on a par with that of Stafford. Does this account justify the transcendence of rural, over municipal, order and virtue? It may not be improper to throw a classical relief over the comparison. Where did the ancient Mythology place its most monstrous forms? In the gardens, by the streams, among the woods. There range Pan and Silenus: the Sylvani, the Satyrs, the Fauns. The Dryads are also there. They approach not the cities nor disfigure the towns.

The manufacturing and the agricultural provinces have sometimes been in a state bordering upon insurrection. The cause has been some imputed grievance. When the flail was to be superseded by the thrashing machine, the farmers' men were roused to phrenzy.

Their revenge was not only against the machine,which might be expected, but upon the stacked corn. Now this was blind and wicked. Incendiarism is still the crime of the day. It stalks with its brand among the fairest gardens of our country. It spreads on every hand suspense and panic. Very recently there rose up a band of marauders in the trading districts, gathering the idle and the vicious as it advanced. It was an invasion. It insisted on the universal suspension of manufacture. Its plea was the injustice of existing wages. Save in one spot, and nearly where the tumult begun, there was no depredation on property; in no instance was there violence on life, except in withstanding force. With this wild proceeding, this profligate interference, there was little sympathy. It was rightly judged and strongly condemned. "A poor man that oppresseth the poor is like a sweeping rain which leaveth no food." Like a torrent it died away. Between the two courses of proceeding there was almost every advantageous contrast on the side of the manufacturing workmen. There was no deep-laid plot, no vindictive passion, no long-sustained resistance, no midnight concealment, no cowardly agent, no reckless devastation. The power for mischief was for days uncontrollable, but it was spontaneously stayed. It differed much in this. The one was an agrarian rebellion, the peasantry taking a general part in it, or harbouring those who did. It lasted for years. Its dastard fires still blaze. The other was a rolling